I believe in good luck, and the harder I work and the more I believe in myself, the luckier I get.

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house.

I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully for ages to come. My hope of its duration is built much on the enlargement of the resources of life going hand in hand with the enlargement of territory.

The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.

The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor I.